We have seven stops before arriving back in New York City and we are enjoying our final moments in Europe. I can’t believe it is finally time to head back and I also can’t wait for our next excursion over here!
Our first stop was Livorno, Italy. It was only a hop, skip, and 17 minute train ride away from Pisa, so we headed there to see the Leaning Tower.
Our second stop was Marseilles, France. I learned about their Christmas market a few weeks before, so that was our goal. We were hoping it would be a good representative market for the kids, and it did not disappoint!
Third stop was the one we had already visited, Barcelona. We had a few “must eat” food places in mind and strolled the streets with a free Rick Steves audio tour we didn’t do on the previous visit. We lucked into another Christmas market and enjoyed shopping among the throngs of people.
Through the Straights of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic for our final spanish port, Cádiz. We explored through a pre-arranged “free city tour” company and enjoyed this visit to this much conquered Iberian port.
Our final sight of mainland Europe was in Lisbon. We again chose a free audio tour from Rick Steves and spent over four hours wandering the tight alleyways and beautiful mosaic lanes. Chris might have saved us from being pick pocketed on a trolley, too! You need to always stay alert. It might have just been a drug deal, but we will never know.
Off into the Atlantic to visit the Azores and the city of Ponta Delgada. We toured the local fort and military museum, strolled the mosaic streets, and spent the last of our euros. I guess we are now ready to head home!
I was delayed in posting this while waiting for our final port call, Bermuda. Unfortunately, I will still have to dream about my visit to Bermuda because it was cancelled due to a large storm system in the US. If we had stopped as planned the seas state for our transit to NYC would have been awful and potentially unsafe to enter the harbor. Therefore NCL made the decision to bypass Bermuda and head into NYC early allowing us two days (well, more like 38 hours) of time to visit the city and enjoy NYC with a floating hotel and restaurant available at all times. The ship docked next to the USS Intrepid museum and we found it to be a very convenient location to walk to everything we wanted to see.
BONUS: Katie was performing in a concert at Carnegie Hall on our final night in NYC, so we were able to attend and hear her amazing voice singing in Handel’s Messiah.
